Canada’s leaders still just trying to fake it ’til they make it on climate

Catherine McKenna has said multiple times we are going to “absolutely” meet that Harper target. Simple math says it’s impossible without major restructuring of our economy, especially our energy sector and particularly the West where 60 per cent of our emissions originate.

A haul truck carrying a full load drives away from a mining shovel at the Shell Albian Sands oilsands mine near Fort McMurray, Alta. THE CANADIAN PRESS/Jeff McIntosh

Last week there was a ministerial meeting in Belgium where environment ministers from Europe and China met to continue to push for the COP21 Paris commitments. Oh and Canada was there too, though it isn’t at all clear why given what we said.

Ah Catherine McKenna, our Environment and Climate Change Minister. Here’s what she sounded like coming into the job in a 2015 interview with the CBC “”People are looking at what Canada is going to commit to…You can’t just come up with targets out of thin air…The Conservative target is a floor not a ceiling, but you have to do the hard work to figure out — how do we change our economy and move to a low carbon economy?”

At COP21 in Paris, McKenna was instrumental in establishing the aspirational goal 1.5ºC in the final agreement. French Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius appointed McKenna as a facilitator in the Paris negotiation and she lead the push according to the Globe and Mail. It was reported “Green Party Leader Elizabeth May – who attended the meeting as a Canadian delegate – characterized Ms. McKenna’s intervention as ‘fantastic’.”

Ironically, “fantastic” may have been the right word to use, but instead of “extraordinarily good” as May meant it could instead have been “remote from reality”. A while later Canada’s commitment remained the Harper target, and remained a ceiling not a floor. And as for the aspirational target of 1.5ºC, not a word of Canada aspiring towards that.

Since then Catherine McKenna has said multiple times we are going to “absolutely” meet that Harper target. Simple math says it’s impossible without major restructuring of our economy, especially our energy sector and particularly the West where 60 per cent of our emissions originate. The UN and others have said that our outlooks fall far short of even the modest Harper target. So Minister McKenna, what happened to the “hard work to figure out” that you told us about in those early days not even three years ago?

Turns out it is much easier to pretend than to do that hard work. Here we have our Minster of the Environment and Climate Change in Belgium saying a fantastical thing. “Canada is clearly punching above its weight on the climate file.” What? As the European Union proposed moving their target from 40 per cent below 1990 levels to 45 per cent below 1990 levels Canada stated we were going to keep our Harper target of 30-per-cent reduction from 2005 levels.

By what definition is that punching above our weight? We have no plan to actually get to the 30-per-cent reduction. We might get half that. And that puts us pretty well exactly back at 1990 levels. Europe will be down 45 per cent and we will be down zero if we are lucky.

The same person that pushed for that aspirational target to be included in the final agreement in Paris now says “”We negotiated an ambitious climate plan and we’re committed to implementing that plan. That’s quite frankly our focus right now.” If she had meant by “we” the Europe Union she’s correct. But if she meant Canada she’s way off base as measured by her own words in 2015. And McKenna meant Canada, that was her explanation for Canada not changing our target like Europe had.

Canada has zero credibility on climate change action. The Pan-Canadian Framework On Clean Growth and Climate Change was a public relations exercise with no clear roadmap to even our modest goal. The Trudeau government has put all their political capital into establishing national carbon pricing. But they did it in a patchwork fashion without full consensus and it has not been designed to be effective. Just having it seems to be enough for the Trudeau government to declare that exercise a success.

And that is really a problem. On the climate file they seem to believe symbolism and rhetoric are more important than results. But they continue to ignore the fact that their pipeline support also is symbolic of a lack of commitment to climate change action. They attempt to get around that with the rhetoric about the old economy being necessary to fund the new economy. They haven’t articulated what the new economy even looks like. Empty and absurdist rhetoric.

The Trudeau government has delivered on some key promises: increase in refugee settlement, middle class tax cuts and cannabis legalization. But on others such as electoral reform, First Nations rights and climate change action the results have not matched the symbolism and rhetoric.

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Ross Belot is a retired senior manager with one of Canada’s largest energy companies. In over 30 years in the energy sector he has gained an in-depth understanding of the economics of global and Canadian crude oil, refining and petroleum products economics and logistics. He has published essays, short fiction and poetry and works in photography and documentary film. He is currently enrolled at St Mary’s College of California’s Master of Fine Arts program.